Monday, August 30, 2004

Gurinder Chadha, director as everyone should now know of Bend it Like Beckham and the forthcoming Bride and Prejudice spoke to recently spoke to rediff.com about her recently completed film.

How would you define Bride And Prejudice?It is a British film made by British finance, obviously because I am British.
But it is a homage to Hindi cinema and to Hollywood musicals. My friends in the West, who have seen it, have compared it to Grease. They don't know the musical references from Hindi films. There are very deliberate references to the cinema of Manoj Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Yash Chopra and Karan Johar.

Do you think post-Bend It, Bride And Prejudice might be over-sold to the public?

I don't think so. I know audiences will go to the theatres with a lot of expectations. But they will enjoy it. I don't think it will be a huge 100-week 'House Full' film in India because it's in English...What I hope to do with Bride And Prejudice is make the Hindi language familiar to the world. After all, Bollywood is much bigger than Hollywood. Hopefully, it will work both ways. It will spur Westerners to watch more Hindi movies and also inspire Bollywood filmmakers towards better narratives.

The film opens in India and the UK on October 8th, and during the very busy Christmas movie season in the states.

Incidentally, it is quite amazing to flip on my cable, and in one channel sweep find Monsoon Wedding on IFC, Bend it Like Beckham on HBO, and commercials for Mira Nair's forthcoming Vanity Fair throughout. From eating chilled monkey brains and snake surprise to this. How far Desis have come!